Nearly half of Native American and Alaska Native households experienced food insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new report from the Native American Agriculture Fund, The Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative and the Food Research & Action Center. The report urged “putting Tribal governments in the driver’s seat of feeding people” to create a more resilient food system.
The report, which highlights the results of a survey of about 500 people with diverse tribal affiliations, found that one in four respondents experienced very low food security—which means they reduced their food intake because they couldn’t afford or access food.
The results contrast with a recent USDA report, released in September, that found that levels of food insecurity nationwide in the pandemic year of 2020 were about the same as in 2019—with 10.5 percent of households experiencing food insecurity, including 3.9 percent experiencing very low food security.
“Our findings were the exact opposite,” said Toni Stanger-McLaughlin, CEO of the Native American Agriculture Fund. “We were seeing a drastic number of people experiencing food insecurity and lack of nutrition during Covid-19.”
Some groups were particularly hard-hit: families with children, people whose employment was disrupted by the pandemic and people who are in fair or poor health.
While few studies have focused specifically on food insecurity in Native American communities, one study based on data from 2000 to 2010 found that one in four American Indian and Alaska Native households were food insecure—twice the rate of white households. This new report urges the federal government to do a better job collecting data on food insecurity among Native Americans.
The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated longstanding disparities in Native Americans’ health, economic well-being and living conditions. Food prices were also already high in many tribal communities—especially remote ones—and supply chain issues and rising prices made the problem worse, the report said.
At the same time, some federal food assistance for Native communities during the pandemic was delayed because tribal governments are not eligible to administer certain anti-hunger programs, including SNAP and child nutrition programs. And while the federal government’s Covid-response legislation did appropriate additional funding to the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR)—which distributes food to primarily American Indian and Alaska Native people—the funding was delayed and the program received a smaller funding increase than other federal anti-hunger programs, the report said.
The report also highlighted the response of tribal governments and Native farmers and ranchers to pandemic-related hunger and food chain disruptions. Many tribal governments mobilized their own food reserves, departments of agriculture and facilities to feed people. “They took it a step further to make sure that their community members—and those living within their communities that are not Native—would not go without food,” Stanger-McLaughlin said.
The Osage Nation, for example, is strengthening its food sovereignty by building a meatpacking and butchering plant as well as scaling up food production at one of its farms by adding greenhouses, an aquaponic operation and more equipment.
The Native American Agriculture Fund worked with farmers and ranchers to find alternative processing plants for cattle and bison when slaughterhouses closed due to Covid-19. The group also funded a range of food security projects during the pandemic, from greenhouses to extend the growing season, to fruit and vegetable vouchers for use at a tribal marketplace, to home gardening kits and computers for farmers who needed to use Zoom and access online sales platforms.
The report made a series of recommendations for building a “localized, Native led food system” that would increase food security in tribal communities. It called for a 20 percent set-aside in each of the USDA’s existing program authorities in order to build infrastructure for Native farmers and ranchers. It recommended an expansion of tribal governments’ authority and ability to administer all federal nutrition programs.
The report also urged changes in procurement rules for the WIC, child nutrition and FDPIR programs that would make it easier to purchase local, traditional and Native-produced foods, and streamline the process through which Native farmers can become WIC-approved vendors.
To build a more resilient food system—one that can withstand natural disasters and future pandemics—Stanger-McLaughlin said it’s crucial to build agricultural infrastructure that will support not only tribal communities and growers, but rural communities in general. “For so long we have used this industrialized method that we forgot about our local family farmers, our local producers, our traditional producers, and made it almost illegal for them to support their community members,” she said.